Good food and enjoying it with family and friends (that includes all of you out there) is one of the great gifts in life! Blogging is a way of sharing my love of food with a much larger group of friends and learning about others through their own creations. Food is home and home is safety and warmth and all things good in my world.

Food brings communities and cultures together. For me, there is no greater honor than being invited into someone’s home and learning about them through their food. I lived in many different areas of this great country as a child and everywhere I went I have memories of people and their food. One of my fondest memories of food and community was the cuban culture in Miami and the wonderful guava con queso empanadas my father and I would share.

Since I’m sharing today let me tell you something else about me…

I don’t get too attached to inanimate objects.

BUT

There is one piece of furniture in my home that I truly cherish and would be sad if it was destroyed…

It’s my dining room table.

It a big, solid beautiful table where meals are shared, homework is completed, quilts are sewn, babka rolled out! I adore it! Isn’t it beautiful?

I bring up my dinner table because not only do I love it but I was reminded why I love it so much when I was sent to the beautiful country of Armenia for work in 2007. While there, we would work hard all day and then at night share Armenia’s wonderful food and drink around big long tables piled high with food.

We would laugh and learn about each other. It was great fun.

We even had a feast in the Armenian mountainside outdoors in March with the gorgeous mountains as our backdrop. In the top picture you can see the little shack we ate outside of and maybe you can even see our impromptu dinner table. A lamb was slaughtered in our presence and grilled on grape vines to make us feel welcome!

To help me remember the importance of the family table and food I have hung an Armenian rug I brought back next to my dining table. You can see it in the picture of my dining table above. It was made during soviet times and it is a beautiful reminder of Armenia’s past and present!

In Armenia they know what good fresh food is all about. Dinner was an event that took hours to complete. There were multiple courses which included fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, matsun and lavash, fish, grilled lamb and beef. Between courses, there was much toasting to good health and happiness with swigs of homemade vodka and wine.

Armenia helped remind me to work hard yet enjoy what’s really important. Life really begins when we get home and sit down at the table and share our day with the ones we love while eating food we have made. One of my core values is eating at the dining room table…we sit…we talk…we enjoy. Sometimes with the rush of life…karate practice, PTA meetings… I need to be reminded of this and its importance to me.

Keep on cooking food for your friends and family no matter what the day brings. Never stop sharing and learning about one another and never miss an opportunity to invite others into your home and share FOOD!

[…] While there I discovered Lebni cheese and to my delight it is very close to the matsun I enjoyed slathering all over my lavash when visiting Armenia several years ago. If you haven’t read my post about my time in Armenia – check it out! […]

Strudel and Streusel are two friends living in different cities, sharing a love of baking (and butter) through this blog. With Streusel in Denver, and Strudel in Seattle, we've found our little site to be a great way to stay in touch, share recipes we love, and talk about experiences in our respective cities.